By David Carrigg
Staff writer

A well-worn copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War sits next to a laptop below decks on Chris Beckett’s sailboat. The 31-year-old computer consultant—who looks more like a deckhand on a trawler than a designer of kids’ video games—lives aboard his 30-foot Catalina in False Creek, 20 metres offshore at the eastern edge of Charleson Bay.

He slides into his cabin, rummages around on what serves as a dining, living and work table and emerges, hand first, holding a water-crinkled letter from the office of the city clerk.

"If they try and get me or the others out of here, I’ll get a lawyer and I’ll fight them," he says, eyes squeezed almost shut in the midday sun. "You’ve got true freedom and true ownership out here. It’s your boat and no one can take that away."

Beckett sits at the helm and casts an eye at other

liveaboards on the sliver of water that once served as the muck-pond for city industry. "It’s a real mixed bag. One guy is on disability and this is the only way he can support a lifestyle. There’s a 22-year-old bicycle courier who just finished paying off his boat. Another is a BCIT student," says Beckett, who admits he’s an exception to most liveaboards because he has full-time work.

"Most of these people have nothing. They bought a cheap boat and they live on it and work when they can.

It allows them not to be a drain on society and gives them a chance for a dignified life. At night in False Creek it’s quiet and it’s gorgeous. There’s nowhere better to be."

After struggling since Expo 86 to get rid of boaters who live for free on False Creek or simply leave their boats to rot, city council passed a bylaw May 10 banning stays longer than 14 days, with violators fined $200 up front and $50 for each day overstayed.

But Beckett reckons the city doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on because he has a constitutional right to anchor in open water. At best, the city can only keep liveaboards out of its own water at the southeast portion of the creek. With the help of his ancient Chinese warfare book and the support of other liveaboards, Beckett thinks he has a good chance of winning the battle.

For five years Don Brynildsen, assistant city engineer, has been hatching plans to force out the 60 or so boats anchored without permission in False Creek. From the north-facing window in his fifth-floor city hall office, Brynildsen points to the spot in front of Science World where a derelict boat sank that morning, dumping fuel in the water. The incident has only bolstered his determination to evict boats anchored in False Creek for more than two weeks. Brynildsen says the perceived inequity between the liveaboards and those who pay to live in or around False Creek is at the heart of the new bylaw.

"The liveaboards are squatting and taking advantage of the good qualities of Vancouver without paying for it," he says. "People who live along the creek who are complaining mostly feel that they are paying a good price to live there and they pay for their services, and yet these people don’t."

During Expo 86, the old Vancouver Port Corporation made short shrift of derelict boats and liveaboards in False Creek. The federal-government body simply warned them all once. When some didn’t move they were towed out of the creek and impounded or scrapped.

The city doesn’t have the same legal right to tow boats from the creek, Brynildsen says, but staff members are trying to get the Vancouver Charter amended to allow removal of boats in breach of the bylaw.

Trouble is, the city only has jurisdiction over part of the creek. Most of the north side is owned by Concord Pacific, which has done little about the liveaboards in its waters, but plans to kick them out when it builds a marina at the foot of Davie Street. The middle is a navigation channel primarily owned by the province, and anchoring is prohibited under the Canada Marine Act.

Water lots on the south side of False Creek are owned by either the province —responsible for Charleson Bay—or the city. The province has the authority to prevent anchoring on its water lots but doesn’t.

Getting this potpourri of owners to concertedly crack down on liveaboards has been Brynildsen’s headache since 1996.

"We’ve been trying to get things achieved and we’ve been held back. Various things have stopped us from proceeding and we’ve got to the point where, between frustration and a lack of action, we decided to proceed and this bylaw is the first step. Hopefully, the province will come on side and we’ll move to the second step."

If the province allows the new city bylaw to apply to Charleson Bay, and Concord kicks unauthorized boaters out of its bay at the bottom of Davie Street, the city will at last be able to force derelicts and squatters out of the creek.

In reality, however, the city’s first attempt to control liveaboards has already failed.

In August 1999, the city got a licence from the province to occupy Charleson Bay and installed 13 moorage buoys, charging boat owners $15 a night for a maximum of three nights’ moorage. Notes were posted on all boats anchored in the bay, telling them to vacate.

At the same time, the city coordinated a boating information centre, jointly funded with the federal government under a program intended to create work for unemployed fishermen. Located just west of the Burrard Street bridge, the centre was designed to tell visitors about their rights of anchorage and where they could moor.

Today, if you phone the city-provided number for the information centre, you’re transferred to a message bank, which is full. If you turn up in person, you’ll find the doors closed. After two years of operation, the feds have pulled their funding and the city is now trying to come up with another way to pay for the centre.

Meanwhile, only five city moorage buoys remain in Charleson Bay—the rest were either sunk or destroyed during a big storm last year. Of those five, two are occupied by derelict boats with layer upon layer of notes pasted on their doors telling them to leave. One of the boats, a 25-foot power launch, is already listing badly and looks one storm short of going under, or floating aimlessly into boats moored at the nearby Heather Civic Marina.

City engineer Michelle Harris, who’s taken a key role in the fight against the False Creek squatters, insists the city intends to go after the two derelict boats, taking the owners to court to recover fees for the time they’ve spent tied up at the city moorings—a total of several thousand dollars. Looking at the sad state of the vessels, it’s clear the city has little chance of getting its money. At best, it may win the legal right to tow them away from the buoys.

The city isn’t giving up, however—its portion of False Creek is about to be marked off with buoys, after which a private security firm will start taking note of who’s staying in the area and for how long. If boaters stay beyond the allowed 14 days, the security firm will inform the Vancouver Police Department’s marine squad, which is supposed to kick them out.

But until the city gets the province to ban anchoring in its part of False Creek, those forced out of the city lot will simply head to Charleson Bay.

Brynildsen has been asking the province for support for years without success, but hopes a Liberal government will be more cooperative.

"The province doesn’t manage its lands directly like the city does; they’re managing from a distance," he says. "Maybe they’re concerned over whether they should control False Creek or not and they’re dealing with those concerns internally."

When the wind blows hard from the west along False Creek, the seemingly protected creek turns nasty and poorly anchored boats are often dragged upstream into boats moored legally at Heather Civic Marina.

Malcolm Sparrow’s 41-foot sailboat, moored at the end of one of the marina fingers, has been hit twice by drifting derelicts, the second time just days after his boat was repaired from the first hit. The first boat that hit his yacht, resulting in $9,000 in damage, was anchored

with a piece of steel. The second one’s anchor line simply broke. "The first thing I do every time I go to the marina is have a look at the side of my boat and see if it’s been hit again," says Sparrow, who wants all boats not properly moored in the creek removed.

Creekside residents have other complaints: feces being dumped overboard, garbage bins along False Creek pathways being filled, unauthorized use of Heather Civic Marina showers, noise, unsightliness and derelicts simply sinking.

"We get a lot of complaints from people—there have been accidents, near misses, vessels sinking, posing environmental and navigation hazards," says Harris, adding some taxpayers are even upset because the 20 or so liveaboards use city roads.

But Beckett, who is compiling information on how west coast U.S cities handle liveaboards, scoffs at most of the complaints and believes it’s a few well-organized groups that constantly criticize him and his aquatic neighbours.

"Behind all of this is tax," says Beckett, who moved to False Creek a month ago. "They say we don’t pay tax, so now they are going to spend tens of thousands of tax dollars to move boats to another part of False Creek. They aren’t solving any problems. They will spend taxpayers’ dollars to enforce the policy and the boats will still be here."

Beckett settled in the creek after finding no liveaboard vacancies at Heather Civic Marina and rejecting a liveaboard spot at the False Creek Yacht Club that would have required a $3,000 initiation fee. The yacht club currently has two liveaboard vacancies, but on top of the initiation fee, boaters pay an annual club levy of $600, a monthly fee of $100 and a $1,000 annual city licence fee.

Heather Civic Marina has no initiation fee—it charges liveaboards $300 to $400 a month plus an annual $1,000 city fee, depending on boat size—but the waiting list for one of its 27 liveaboard slots is five to six years, and the city has no plans to open more berths.

Beckett has a holding tank, but admits some liveaboards dump their waste overboard, as they’re legally entitled to do as long as False Creek has no holding tank law. The creek has been proposed as a protected area under provincial pleasure craft regulations, which would require all vessels to install sewage holding tanks. But the designation has been delayed while boaters contest the types of tanks and treatment methods permitted.

Beckett accepts that some boats don’t have navigation lights on during the night, and that on occasion, a boat will drag its anchor and put others at risk. He insists those problems could be solved with a management plan, rather than a bylaw that merely shifts the problem to another part of the creek. Such a plan, he says, should include removal of all derelict boats, installation of more permanent liveaboard moorings costing $5 a night, and the application of one set of rules to the whole creek, not just the city portion.

Brynildsen admits a management plan for the creek is needed, but says he can’t do anything until the three levels of government and Concord agree on how to regulate the area.

At the council meeting where the bylaw was approved, two liveaboards argued that it’s unfair only rich people can live in False Creek and suggested liveaboard moorage be made available to low-income earners, the same way the city mandates a percentage of social housing in major residential developments.

That’s unlikely to happen, but Beckett is counting on an ace up his sleeve—the Charter of Rights and Freedoms—to keep the liveaboards moored in False Creek for a long time to come.

The province, city and Concord may own the creek’s seabed, but the water is federal territory governed by the Canada Marine Act. Under the act, any Canadian has the right to navigate and anchor in open water. "They haven’t got a legal leg to stand on. Anchoring is part of navigating," Beckett says.

Colin Michael, the Canadian Coast Guard’s B.C. boating safety officer, agrees anchoring is a legal grey area. "Any person can anchor as part of navigation, there’s no doubt about that, but there is no strict definition of how long they can anchor and it has never been tested," says Michael, adding the key issue for the Coast Guard with respect to False Creek is boats drifting.

Nonetheless, Brynildsen is adamant the city can win any legal challenge to its bylaw. "It’s unclear whether you can anchor forever as part of your constitutional right to navigate and anchor in open water. But we think coming in and anchoring for five years is a bit much and the jurisdiction the federal government has in relation to navigation is being overstepped by people who stay for longer than two or three weeks," says Brynildsen, who hopes to have all unauthorized boats out of the creek by 2003.

The city faces a cautionary example, however, from its panhandling bylaw, which was abandoned after it looked like a similar bylaw in Winnipeg would be successfully challenged under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

And if you live by Sun Tzu’s philosophy on waging war, the city’s long-running war against False Creek squatters is already lost.